Friday, June 14, 2013

'National Security' has Diverged from the Public Good

I feel like I’m a beating a dead horse
where the revelations to the NSA’s PRISM program and the administration’s
response to those revelations are concerned, but the administration and its
allies in Congress are proving to be absolutely tone-deaf to the public
welfare.

Really, Mr Holder?Would you like to prove that to us?I suppose that evidence is classified as
well, too secret to share with the public in whose name you serve in high
office.

And a member of the Obama administration—which
has dragged the United States deeper into a counterproductive war on, of, and
by terror—has a lot of nerve talking about damaging the national security of
the United States.

It takes particular chutzpah for Holder to
make this claim.He does, after all,
head the department which seized the records of the Associate Press, a full
frontal assault on the Fourth Estate which, as the NSA episode proves, is our
best hope for shedding light on the machinations of our security state absent
Congress acquiring a spine and the will to do its job.

Holder’s Justice Department, moreover, made
the incredible decision not to prosecute anyone for the financial crimes
committed by banks in the run-up to our financial crisis.As
Senator Elizabeth Warren—long a lonely voice speaking out on behalf of the
public on this matter—put it: “I believe strongly that if a regulator
reveals itself to be unwilling to take large financial institutions all the way
to trial—either because it is too timid or because it lacks resources—the regulator
has a lot less leverage in settlement negotiations... If large financial
institutions can break the law and accumulate millions in profits and, if they
get caught, settle by paying out of those profits, they do not have much
incentive to follow the law”.

This is as true of the other crimes for
which Holder and Obama offered effective amnesty.Members of the Bush administration and the
intelligence services who condoned, incited, and carried out murders, torture,
renditions, kidnappings, disappearances, and aggressive war have all been
allowed to walk free.

Imagine the message this sends to those
in the administration and the intelligence world who in a healthy democracy
would today be wondering whether there would be a reckoning for running an
intrusive, unaccountable program and lying to Congress about it.

Imagine the public outcry that would
result if we let known murderers, kidnappers, sadists, thieves, and gangsters
go, saying “It’s all in the past, let bygones be bygones”.That is effectively what we have done in
refusing to look back at the crimes of the Bush government and of Wall Street,
and by defending the actions of the intelligence agencies today.We are those who have committed violent
crimes—of both a physical and economic character—that there will be no
consequences, and that they are free to reoffend.In fact the bigger the crime—the sinking of a
national economy or the waging of an aggressive war, for example—the safer the
criminal.

It is no wonder we see such a high rate
of recidivism amongst our intelligence agencies, agencies which have perfected
the art of intimidating politicians into doing their bidding.In a biting Guardian op-ed, author
John LeCarré characterised the work of the intelligence services thus: “How
good are you at talking people into betraying their country? ... One thing that
won’t have changed in the 50-odd years since I left the secret world, and never
will, is the gullibility of the uninitiated when faced with real-life
spies.In a flash, all rational
standards of human judgment fall away”.

It’s no wonder that military and
intelligence commanders scramble to be first to brief the new Commander in
Chief, a briefing during which, by all accounts, they do their best to scare
the heck out of him, convincing him that if they are not permitted to carry on
with their toils—unimpeded by niceties like justice, oversight, or morality—the
sky will fall.

Former Vice-President Al Gore has
joined the chorus of the administration’s critics, arguing that “it is not
acceptable to have a secret interpretation of a law that goes far beyond any reasonable
reading of either the law or the constitution and then classify as top secret
what the actual law is”.He tore into defenders
of the NSA who have cited favourable polls, noting that “We don’t do dial
groups on the Bill of Rights”.

Some uniquely
unprincipled commentators have sought to rein in liberal and left-wing
criticism of the NSA’s breach of our civil liberties by accusing us of not
trusting government, and of breaking with our political community, conflating
the interests of that community with those of a branch of the state that has
proven itself time and again to be violent, unaccountable, and dangerous.

The truth, of course, is that it is this
administration and its predecessor, and not its critics, who are breaking those
bonds, and diminishing
trust in our institutions and political community.We are merely seeking to remind this
government of where its true responsibilities lie, of the people to whom it
owes clarity, honesty, and transparency, and that in this day and age, the “national
security of the United States” is no longer the same thing as the public
interest, safety, and welfare of the citizens of the United States.

About Me

I am from Northern California, and am the fifth generation of my family to have lived in the Golden State. Now I live next-door in the Silver State, where I work as an assistant professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I research and write about colonialism and decolonization in Africa, teach European, African, environmental, and colonial history, and write this blog, mostly about politics, sometimes about history, and occasionally about travels or research. This blog also appears on the website of the Redding Record Searchlight.